 I'm Stacy Klein, founder and artistic director of Double Edge, and I have the honor to introduce the third in the living presence of our history series presented by Okiteo, an Indigenous Cultural Center, and co-presented by Double Edge. The Okiteo Council's co-directors, Rhonda Anderson and Larry Spotted Crow Mann, have generously decided not only to develop and create their own much needed cultural and multi-tribal western mass focused practices and cultural space, but also to share beyond their own people this educational series so that our communities can learn about the long unacknowledged history of the Nipmuc Nation and the other tribal presences among us. The first in the Living Presence series delved into the reality of these tribes today, their presence and the relationship to their millennia-long history of presence. What became clear as Larry and Rhonda shared stories of their upbringing and their children's upbringing was how essential it is for allies of the Indigenous community to support their voices and acknowledge the extreme challenges facing their community to living, adjust and acknowledge fully-realized cultural life. The second in the series was subtitled, Mascot's Logos, Imagery and Cultural Appropriation. The genocide and resettlement may appear to many as things of the past, but it has become known to us and the second panel made that very clear that a history of colonial disappearance of an entire people has a clear and horrifying imprint in today's racist stereotyping in state seals, flags, school mascots and other misleading imagery that only hold a false supremacist mirror to Native youth and to all who are subjected to being forced into an image not of their own making. I think that's important to reiterate that we all want our image to be of our own making. For this reason, Double Edge is devoting space, resources and time to the autonomous place in which Native voices will be determinant and the final word on their own identity. The third in the Living Presence series relates to this topic of determination. It's called Healing and Reparations through the Land-Back Movement. It directly addresses the subject of the essential space and land. I'd like to introduce the people of Okiteo who are making this happen. Actually, first, I want to thank the people who have funded this programming and also other programs at Okiteo that are of a different nature. Thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Mass Humanities and Hal Round who is making this series and also recording it so you can go back if you have missed the first two and hear that forever. Kutabadamesh to Andre Strong-Bearhart Gaines, Okiteo's first artist in residence who is re-infusing this land with traditional practice and sharing the Nipmuk language to be heard again and also teaching people in double-edged generously that language. The co-directors of Okiteo. Rhonda Anderson is a Nupiak Atabaskin from Alaska. Her native enrollment village is Kaptovic. Her life work, most importantly, is as a mother, a classically trained herbalist, silversmith, and activist. She works as an educator, activist on the removal of mascots, water protector, Indigenous identity, and protecting her traditional homeland in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from extractive industry. Rhonda curated vital, vibrant, visible Indigenous identity through portraiture, an ongoing collection and exhibit of portraits of Native peoples of New England to bring awareness to contemporary Indigenous identity. She's also the curator of the living presence of our history series and will be the moderator, incredible moderator today. Rhonda is also commissioner to Indian Affairs in Western Massachusetts, a founding member and co-director of the Okiteo Cultural Council and the Native Youth Empowerment Foundation, as well as a representative of the Native movement. We have worked really hard on Okiteo this year during COVID, incredibly hard, but all of that was going on while Rhonda has been working tirelessly in the State House and every other place to rid our community of the disaster of mascots and other things. Larry Spotted Croman is a citizen of the Nipmuck Tribe of Massachusetts. He is a nationally acclaimed award-winning writer, poet, and cultural educator, traditional storyteller, tribal drummer, dancer, and motivational speaker involving youth sobriety, cultural and environmental awareness. Larry's books, including Morning Becomes Thanksgiving and the Whispering Basket are available online. He has been a board member of the Nipmuck Cultural Preservation, is on the review committee at the Native American Poets Project and travels throughout the United States, Canada, and parts of Europe, not since COVID started, to schools, colleges, powwows, and other organizations sharing the music, culture, and history of Nipmuck people and lectures on Native American sovereignty and identity. Larry is co-director of the Okiteo Council and the Native Youth Empowerment Foundation and Larry has also been working tirelessly answering the calls of people who have finally realized that they need to call the Native community's voices all over, including Harvard, Jacob Spillow, and too many to count. Larry, thank you. I greet you in the language of my ancestors. I greet you in the words of peace and reciprocity. In other words, there is no exact translation in the English language. I ask that our ancestors come and share this space with us and that when we share our breath, we are sharing our spirit, we are sharing our honesty, our integrity, and that we ask that we have this exchange, this conversation in a good way that we would both leave in a better place after that. Thank you, Stacey, by the way. It is always very important that we open up and ground ourselves in that important aspect of language, culture, and identity. I know that we are about to have a very serious conversation about land back. This is a really important time and I am really excited to be here with all of you today. There is no better way to start that off than reminding people the language of that land and what it spoke back to the people and what it is still speaking to the people. I believe it is speaking to all of us now and the reason why we are gathered here today. With that, in this time of crisis and turmoil, whether it is the pandemic or racial tensions and the continuation of inequity that we are all experiencing, I want to offer this NITLO healing song. I pray that it comes to you in a good way and it helps you out on whatever journey you are going through as we take on this journey today together. She is a commissioner on Indian diversity. I am so sorry that we are not outside. And to the panelists, I am so sorry. My name is Ronda Anderson. I am from Alaska and I just greeted you in my traditional language. I have lived most of my life here in western Massachusetts. I grew up in Plainfield. I went to school at the beloved old Sanders and Academy right down the street. And I choose to live here in western Massachusetts and the land that I am privileged to steward and live on is in Colrain and it is the traditional homelands of Sakoke, Ebenaki and Pekamtuk on the Pekamagon watershed, which is known as the Green River today. So welcome officially to the living presence of our history, part three, the healing and reparations through land back movement. This is a conversation on indigenous land tenures through which of an access. The topic was identified as a necessary conversation this fall when we featured Dr. Just Cree in traditional indigenous medicine. This forum is a continuation of necessary conversations with indigenous community members and allies regarding issues that we face today as native people. The panel will delve into the importance of the land back movement, the dispossession, colonization and lack of access to traditional lands that have caused generations of harm and the recent awareness of rematriation through the land back movement. It's gaining traction. Before I continue I'd like to recognize this land that I'm a guest on and this land that we're all benefiting from is Wabanaki Confederacy territory. Wabanaki means the place where the sun is born every day, making the people of this territory people of the dawnland. Tribes historically local to this area would be Sakoke-Abanaki, Pekamtuk, Nipmuk, Nanatuk and Mohican tribes. Sakoke means the people who go their own way and Sakoke are still here and they are a state recognized tribe in southern Vermont. Pekamtuk is a Mohican Pekamtuk word that would translate roughly to people of a narrow swift river or people of a swift clear stream. And Pekamtuk were absorbed into their kin of Mohican-Abanaki and Nipmuk peoples. Nipmuk means people of the freshwater and of course they're still here, they're a state recognized tribe in Massachusetts with a small reservation of land that the Nipmuk has never ceded or been out of tribal hands. Nanatuk means the oxbow part of the Konitaka River and local tribes also absorb the Nanatuk. Mohican translates to people of the waters that are never still and it's referencing the Hudson River. War, genocide and dispossession and colonization that pressed the Nanatuk and Pekamtuk to seek refuge with their neighboring kin also pushed the Mohican Stockbridge and Muncie bands west in the late 1700s through 1800s to Wisconsin where they have a reservation today on the nominee territory. The Mohican tribe does maintain tribal ties to this area and they have an office in Williamstown and they have land in Troy, New York to maintain their local ties. We are in the watershed of the Pekamtuk River or Connecticut River. Pekamtuk means long tidal river and while this river has known several names by many different groups of people along its flowing path, Konitaka has stuck. So it's important to remember that while Indigenous communities have lived, gathered, farmed, hunted and fished in the area for thousands of years, they're still here. So please get to know the Indigenous people of your area and ask what you can do to lift and raise their voices and honor and respect their sovereignty. And in that spirit, I have three action items. First, recognize and make changes to the dominant narrative that glorifies colonization and genocide of Indigenous peoples of this area. Be mindful that problematic terms like Pioneer Valley or a reminder of a legacy of dispossession, removal and subsequent erasure. Second, please consider supporting any one of the Native organizations that are here today. So I will post after this event, I will post a list of the organizations and a reading list after the event. Lastly, there are five bills in the State House that five tribes of Massachusetts support that address removing racist mascots from public schools, changing Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day, respecting cultural heritage, creating appropriate educational curriculum in our schools on Massachusetts tribes, and to create a permanent commission to ensure the education of Native youth in the state. So please contact your legislator through MAindigenousagenda.org and encourage them to co-sponsor and support these bills. So thank you for listening. I am now super honored to be able to introduce our incredible panel members that are sitting inside on such a gorgeous day. And hopefully we'll hear a little bit from each individual as I'm introducing. First, I'm very honored to introduce Ramona Peters. She's Chairwoman and Acting Treasurer of Native Land Conservancy. Ramona is a Bear Clan member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and lives in Mashpee on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Ramona has recently worked for Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe as a Tribal Historic Preservation Officer and NAGPRA, Native American Graves and Protection and Repatriation Act Director. Her work focuses on repatriation, indigenous rights, historic and cultural preservation, and many other endeavors of the Wampanoag. She also serves her tribes in a variety of capacities, including as a traditional chief's counselor and a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Women's Medicine Society. She's the sole proprietor of Peters Wampanoag Consulting Company, assisting other tribes, universities, museums, and archaeological service companies, historic preservation agencies, authors, and community development organizations. Ramona has a master's degree in applied human and community development from the California School of Professional Psychology and a bachelor's degree in Education from the University of Arizona. Ramona is also a well-known ceramicist of traditional Wampanoag pottery. So Ramona, I've heard or read, actually, that you have used the term resistor and that the work of a resistor is to carry on the culture, that they're born to do this work chosen by creation. So you have two minutes or less to tell me why you choose or maybe have been chosen to do this work. Are you a resistor? I am a resistor. I would have to say yes, I am a resistor determined to hold on to all the cultural traditions that I can possibly bring forward and continue. I used to teach Indian education, as they call it, in our school system to native children here in Mashpee. And it was one of my absolute favorite jobs to see how, well, it just picks everyone up. And it helps us while we face this world as it is. Our values are still very different. We really need each other in our culture to sustain ourselves through the anti-Earth and anti-Native culture. There's so many values that are lost in capitalist society that our people are just never going to, well, I shouldn't say never. Hopefully our people stay at resistors as well to adopting things that are merely against the Earth. Concepts that are looking at the Earth as a resource rather than a loving being, and that their respects and honors and holds us as cherished loving beings as well, our mother. So, yeah, I hope I believe we're all resistors in some ways, holding on to treasures that support humanity and all living things. Excellent. I'm so proud to know that you are a fellow resistor. Resist on. Is Fred, Fred is on? Fred Freeman, Chair and Founding Member of Nipmuc Cultural Preservation, is a former board member of Nipmuc Tribal Acknowledgment Project. Fred has been an integral key to obtaining land in the Quabban-Nitjawag Bioregion of Petersham that will allow the Nipmuc Nation to have a place for teaching, interacting with greater community, and provide a space for tribal members to heal. Looking towards the future, Nipmuc Cultural Preservation will construct an environmentally friendly cultural and education center to teach and represent the aesthetics of Nipmuc culture on this land. So Fred, in two minutes or less, how did you come to do this work? Did you have a strong role model in your life to instill the importance of education and tribal culture? Well, for the most part, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, great. For the most part, really, it's something that's been a part of me since I was very young. And of course, my relatives here in the area spoke a lot about it. And one of the challenges was that being in a city environment, we weren't able to be exposed to all these native things that really we should be able to be exposed to. And I really hungered for that. You know, time went on, and of course, there was a push for federal recognition, which ended in some bitter disappointment. And it was decided at that time that something should be put together so that we could pursue this dream of having land and a place to do the things that traditionally we should know how to do. I got together with David Paul Pine-White, who has since passed. Many of you may know him. And there was a meeting held back in 2013 at the Worcester Public Library in which a group of us community members got together and decided that we needed to have an organization that would pursue these goals. I was asked at that meeting to chair this group. I accepted to do that. And since then, we've been able to acquire approximately 68 acres of land within Central Massachusetts with 20 or so acres of land being in the town of Petersham, Nishawag, which is the native term for the town, and also to acquire other lands in Nakwag, which is the region that Hubbardston, Massachusetts, is part of, as well as Rutland and Oakham and a few other towns. So we've been pursuing that. And been very happy to be able to share that with our Nipmuk community. We're in the process, of course, of looking to see what those lands can be used for ultimately. And that's that. Thank you. Thank you for joining us today. Next is Kristin Wyman. Kristin Wyman of Eastern Woodland Rematriation. She's a Nipmuk and an advocate for tribal subdetermination and revitalizing indigenous foodways and economies. For over 15 years, Kristin has worked as a consultant with nonprofit organizations, tribal governments, and state and federal agencies, including Native Land Conservancy, Nipmuk Indian Development Corporation, Mashpi Wampanoag Natural Resources Department and Education Department, Mass Department of Public Health, National Park Services, and the University of Massachusetts at Boston. She has initiated several women and youth-led programs in areas of environmental justice, violence and substance abuse prevention, youth development, food sovereignty, and transformative leadership and nonprofit development. Kristin's fight for the right to land, food, medicine, and human dignity is completely tied to her identity and responsibility as a Nipmuk woman, mother, and daughter. She is co-organizer of Eastern Woodlands Rematriation, a network of indigenous women and two spirits restoring the foundation of sustainable food systems. Her work is deeply personal and motivated by the important roles of women as landholders, farmers, culture bearers, artisans, and diplomats. As the Global Movements Program Manager with Y-Hunger, Kristin supports social movement processes at a global level in their path towards food sovereignty and liberation. Kristin is a graduate of UMass Amherst with a degree in legal studies, political science, and Native American studies. She completed her Master of Science Program in Environmental Conservation from the University of New Hampshire. So, Kristin, two minutes or less, can you share when you started to see how it was your responsibility and fight for your identity and rights to land, food, and medicine? Yes. Well, I guess I am a resistor. I didn't know, but it took me, I guess, maybe returning in some fashion to the Connecticut River Valley where I was a student at UMass Amherst. Strangely, it took bad experience for me to really understand what it meant to be a Nipmuk daughter. My grandmother was a traditional leader. My ancestors are from the Eastern part of Nipmuk Territory. I'm a descendant of the Thomas Spien clan, so I grew up right off of Spien Street in Nadek and didn't realize that those were the names of my ancestors and the original proprietors that would do, that would later do the land grant deal with John Elliott to establish the missionary town, the praying town of Nadek. It was my time at UMass Amherst being surrounded by Native community. I believe that just kind of helped me understand, you know, that being born into this kinship, there bears a responsibility. And so I think that's really where the fight in me sort of evolved. But I totally understand that my ancestors and creator had it laid out for me before I was even born. And oftentimes I'll be told that I'm very political. And I often explain there's really no way when we think about all of the odds that are stacked against us in our survival, not just the war, not just the colonialism, but the surviving of the pandemics and the displacement and the removal. You know, there's really no other choice. So, you know, we share the space with a lot of folks that come into it from this altruistic understanding and knowing that we have a responsibility to be good relatives and good ancestors. And for many of us Native people, I know I'm not alone with this. It's just, it's really not a choice. And we do the best we can to continue that trajectory of what Ramona was saying and carrying it forward and knowing that we have a role in today's time to continue the fight and the resistance. Thank you. Thank you for everything you do. Next is Stephanie Morningstar. Stephanie is Mohawk Anida and of mixed European descent. She is an herbalist, soil and seed steward, scholar, student and earth worker, dedicated to decolonizing and liberating minds, hearts and land, one plant, person, ecosystem and non-human being at a time. Stephanie is the executive director and resource relationships and reciprocity co-director of Northeast Farmer of Color Land Trust, an organization dedicated to advancing land access for indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian and other land stewards of color. Stephanie grows medicine and food with her community at Skyworld Apothecary and Farm and teaches about the wonders of plant medicines at seed, soil and spirit school. Stephanie's theory of change is rooted in community-driven, self-determined solutions created by BIPOC communities for BIPOC communities. She carries with her an over a decade of indigenous community-driven systems of change in health care, legal, herbal, agricultural, land access and academic research spaces where she cut her teeth on speaking truth to power. Her work advancing sovereignty in institutional spaces with and for indigenous communities has resulted in mandating indigenous cultural safety training to service providers, indigenous dispute transformation frameworks and meaningful and ethical indigenous-driven research and climate change. So, Stephanie, two minutes or less, can you share what gave you that spark to speak truth to power and begin your work of decolonization? Seigo, Seigo Grego, thank you so much for having me. What gave me that spark? What gave me that spark was the experience of being indigenous in the system. What gave me the spark was if you were talking about the origin story of where I come from and in this work would be the death of my mother. It's not a fun story to share, but I will share that my mother was the inheritor of a great deal of intergenerational trauma that led to something called white coat syndrome, which is a fear of going into western hospital or healthcare spaces. I later found out after her tragic death that the word for hospital in Mohawk is it translates to that place you will never come out of or the place that you go to die. That catalyzed something inside of me. I was already an herbalist. I was already working with plants and the land, but it was something that really catalyzed this being able to see the crystalline structure of settler colonialism throughout all of our systems and interwoven through all of our lives and how that informed the way that we participate in our own ways of being doing and knowing our own healthcare, our own ways of staying in right relationship with each other. I noticed that we were carrying a great deal of pain and anger and suffering and had begun to either identify that pain as something that we can probably see as an autoimmune disorder. It's eating away at ourselves, whether it be through things like intergenerational trauma, the symptoms of like I mentioned white coat syndrome, lateral violence, all these different things. I decided to jump into trying to make a change in systems, which is what I started doing. Through that, I really started looking at land and something that Glenn Colbert said back just a few years ago really struck me and it really started breathing life into why I do what I do now. He said, for Indigenous nations to live, capitalism must die. For capitalism to die, we must actively participate in the construction of Indigenous alternatives to it. Here we are constructing Indigenous alternatives to the capitalistic framework that has not only hurt all of our people, but it's also hurt our relatives, the lands, the waters, the non-human beings who make a life on those lands and waters. So that's why I do what I do. That's why I'm here. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. Next is my good friend, Dr. Jess Jolin, who is an ethnobotanist, anthropologist, and Indigenous studies scholar. She has sought to support Indigenous sovereignty through environmental and food systems projects through her work in Canada and the United States since 2007. She contributes to decolonizing public education in Native American and Indigenous histories by participating in community-based projects, giving talks on ethics and methods of cross-cultural research, curriculum, and library collections curation and teaching. Her doctoral dissertation explored the Haudenosaunee philosophies upon which the Haudenosaunee Environmental Task Course was founded, and she contributed to building an understanding of Indigenous environmental governance and caretaking. In addition to her new role, congratulations, as ethnobotanist for the Aquasasne Environmental Division. She is part of the Biocultural Research Stream of the Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership and the Landscape of Nations 360 Indigenous Mapping Project. So, Dr. Jolin, when did you begin your, I don't know, recognizing your lifelong love for plants, and how did you make that connection to Indigenous philosophies? Hello, everyone. Can you hear me? I'm a little awkward with microphones. Thank you for having me today. And I grew up in Brattleboro, Vermont, which is Sokoke, Abenaki, Homeland. And I think my education of plants mostly came from being outside a lot, growing up playing outside on the rivers and in the forests. And in terms of Native American and Indigenous studies, this is an interesting question to start with. I would say that Southern Vermont and possibly Western Massachusetts, when I was growing up, was full of a lot of sort of romantic stereotypes about Native histories and peoples. And I definitely heard and learned those and absorbed them. And I was, it planted a seed in me, a burning desire to learn the truth and to actually learn what I wasn't being taught. And, you know, I had questions that a lot of people had and probably still have. Like, what were Native communities like before settlers arrived in North America? What were their technologies and sciences and their ceremonies and their ways, their relationships with the land and each other? And so I started out, I wanted to learn about that. But I think it would be appropriate to share that I went to this ethnobiology conference in 2003 before I started on my journey. And I met a wonderful Indigenous ethnobotanist named Enrique Salmon. And he said to me, he advised me, if you want to learn about our people, you should probably go back first and learn from your people. So before I started my big journey into Native American and Indigenous studies, I went to Ireland. And I studied traditional medicine in Ireland. And that's when I got my masters. And then I came back and I ended up going and doing my PhD at McGill University in Montreal. And I learned primarily from the Haudenosaunee. And that's why I still work with them today. And I'm still learning from them today. But I ended up moving home a few years ago. So I'm here now. And last but certainly not least is Peter Forbes of First Light. Peter's life work is about the courageous convening of people across differences of race, class, and ideology to resolve matters of consequence to their shared future. Peter works directly with communities and organizations that aspire to evolve, become more inclusive and equitable. Peter is the co-founder of First Light, an ambitious effort between 65 organizations in Maine, and the Wabanaki people to increase their presence and sovereignty on the land. He has co-leading similar efforts between conservation organizations and Indigenous nations in Alaska, Oregon, and California. So Peter, I know that you have a gorgeous and absolutely beautiful farm in Vermont, Noel Farm. Has this farm been an inspiration for the work that you do? Thank you, Rhonda. Of course it has. And I would say most coming to understand the history of it that I did not know. I am not proud of the fact that until maybe five years ago, I could tell you the names of every western settler on our farm, but could not tell you the name of the Wabanaki family, who Rufus Barrett most certainly displaced. It has given me the courage to be on this panel with all of you, which is a great, great honor. I am, it is an honor because these voices are so important. And Larry, I want to thank you for that very, very powerful prayer and healing to us. My own voice is that of a white man. I am not an Indigenous person. I don't represent Indigenous people. I'm a very privileged, white man working within the conservation movement to transform that movement, because I believe it has a far, far greater promise. I think understanding more the history of the land that I steward, the history that had been hidden to me, understanding that more has made me realize that the sacrifices made by Black, Brown and Indigenous people are part of what made me. And certainly a very, very big part of what made the conservation movement. And I want to make amends. And I think that the conservation movement is mature enough now to know that it also wants to make amends. Finally, I'd say I think to live here in this country in this moment and to try to be whole requires some level, some very big level of cultural reconciliation. And land conservation has a role to play in that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you. I would like to go back to the land acknowledgement. So this is the first, you know, I gave the land acknowledgement in the beginning, right? So this is the first step in recognizing that anywhere you are on Turtle Island, you are on Indigenous land. And understanding that dispossession, war and genocide gave that end result that allows you to benefit. So and I hope that you heard in that land acknowledgement how tribal names are often place-based and understanding how Indigenous tribes, peoples and nations, we see ourselves as coming from the land, a part of the land and identify as such. Indigenous people have practiced the concept of sharing and managing resources on a living land since time immemorial. The concept of owning land, being separate from the land and extracting resources for capitalism is a European colonizer concept. So in working together today, I hope that we're creating intersectional relationships and an understanding of the systems of power and inequity. There will be topics like colonization, racism, white supremacy, dismantling white power and privileged systems. All these terms might make the non-Indigenous listener feel uncomfortable. So please, please listen, check where that energy is coming from, where that discomfort begins, feel those emotions and understand where those fears might come into play whenever you're feeling defensive and learn how to sit with and use that energy for a greater good. So the term itself, land back, really can strike fear into non-natives. I mean, think about it. If we acknowledge that this land was inhabited and cared for by Indigenous people for thousands of years, stolen through hundreds of years of intentional genocide, slavery, war, forced dispossession, does this mean Native people are coming for a land? Land back has many meanings. It can mean disrupting the power of white supremacy and continued colonization. It can mean understanding that colonization is not a historical term. It is an ongoing and intentional process that continues today. Land back can mean allowing access to public lands for traditional pursuits, such as cultural and spiritual ceremonies and the gathering of medicines. Land back can mean returning the land to a tribal stewardship and governance. Land back can mean creating reciprocity with the earth by implementing traditional environmental knowledge and allowing the earth to live in her natural state. Land back can mean simply raising funds to help support these efforts. And yes, land back can literally mean returning land to Indigenous people who are forcibly removed and forcibly dispossessed from the land. But the first step to begin this process is relationship building. Building lasting and reciprocal relationships. We must first listen and center Indigenous voices from this area. And since there are so many ways to define land back, I would ask our Indigenous panelists to define what land back means to them. So first, I am going to ask Kristin, what land back means to you as an individual, as a tribal citizen? And what is the meaning of rematriate? I'm on the spot. Okay. I think I might just share an image. Yeah, I'll share an image. So Eastern Woodlands Rematriation. And I'm just going to stop with this one image. It's a beautiful collage by my sister, Nia Holly Nipmuk. Eastern Woodlands Rematriation is really a collective, as Rhonda mentioned, of Indigenous queer two-spirit, sorry, Indigenous queer two-spirit, FEM folks, and families of Wabanaki and Southern New England tribal communities. And as mentioned, when we're talking about like the kind of Western dominance colonial mindset of being disconnected from the land and having this power over, we're really in this process of rematriation and returning to kind of the Earth-centered, FEM-centered matriarchal, which many of our Cosmovisions and Creation stories originate from this feminine matriarchal understanding. And one thing we're really particular about in explaining rematriation is that it's not to become or replace patriarchy. It's really to challenge this ideology of dominance of power and control and rematriate is really returning to a way that's focused on life, on rebirth, on regeneration of human and non-human relationships. And so Eastern Woodlands Rematriation is really wholesome in our thinking. I think all of our panelists kind of spoke to all of the reasons why it's in existence. We're really trying our best to transition beyond this capitalistic structure of domination, of patriarchy, of focus on control over and kind of a focus on death, it seems. I mean, we know that that is ultimately what capitalism is doing to all of our natural systems. And we've been in this journey for over 400 to 500 years even before that, if we think about the extraction of our of our homelands even before settlement. And now we're in this process of healing. What I really appreciate about rematriation is that we're all in this together. So it is it is native and non-natives rethinking our relationships because we all have been, you know, I'm sitting here speaking English, which is the language of our colonizers. I'm not speaking in my traditional language. I think our languages and our Cosmo visions are probably the strongest tools that we have to really understand these old relationships and an old way of doing things. And so I'm just really excited to contribute to this conversation of landbath because as Rhonda mentioned, there are all are all of these other ways. And depending on the community in Eastern Woodlands rematriation that's thinking about this, I mean, we're not a non-profit. I don't think we ever will be. We are literally a collective of people trying to remodel and embrace and embody a different way of doing things. And so we really respect the autonomy of the different tribal communities that comprise the collective. So the collective has never held land. We really maybe create a container for the facilitation of these different relationships. And I know I can speak for myself personally, that I'm, you know, we're in this path of just wanting to, you know, center it from the perspective of the land. So even in that respect, having necessarily a land trust or another model that might mirror some of these structures that have been harmful of putting kind of a permanent placeholder, we know that that is a tool that is accessible and support the exploration of that tool and what that might look like. But we're also just literally trying to reestablish relationship, even with non-human kin. So that means centering ourselves with, with our medicinals, with our, our four legged, with our river systems and just creating access and starting to facilitate that remembering and that belonging that's been severed for, for many reasons. So I'll just stop there. Thank you for sharing. I once heard Jesse Little Doe Baird say that in Wampanoag, I lost my land comes out as I fall down. And the early Wampanoag always had at least one foot on the ground. And to fall down then was to literally fall off your feet, have no ground beneath you. So when your land is being taken from you, you fall down. So Ramona, I want to ask, does that resonate with you? Do you feel that as though you and your community are upright and standing with both feet on the ground firmly planted when you, when you participate in land-back, like what does the land-back movement mean to you? Well, I feel like we're still standing. First off, I understand what Jesse's trying to say in a dramatic way. But we are still very well planted here standing on two feet. Not feeling so good, but we're together and managing. What it means to me is it's, you know, growing up here, we had 22,000 acres to roam around and three rivers and three major ponds, freshwater ponds, and also four bays, saltwater bays in which we, growing up here, the town was run by Native people right up until 1975. My mother was a town accountant. I'm grandparents on the board of assessors and select men and women. The whole police force, everything, fire department were all Native people. We took care of this land in our town and our tribe and it's one thing. Since then, we have been pushed out of the town hall. We have lost our rights to the land. We tried to recover it through a suit. Some of you may remember. I grew up with listening to elders talk about the loss of land and the land itself is where our culture comes from. It's important to feed ourselves through it and be nourished by it. So creating the Native Land Conservancy was just doing what I heard needed to be done. It's an attempt to create a container to hold the land that people are ready to give back to us as a people. It's an all Native board of directors so that it really has more meaning as coming back to us. Although several different tribes are members of our board, it's not just Mashby right now. That means we understand that all tribes need nourishment by the earth. We want to provide space for that. The Native life ways of what our land will represent or give access to so people. It also is a way for the colonizers to make restitution. Some are ready to do that. It's been a long time. We've exercised as Native people a tremendous amount of patience for the colonizers to do the right thing. I do feel it is the right thing to give land back especially that they're not using or even they've abused and we will work towards restoring it. It's really necessary now and here we are in climate crisis and people are looking towards us to provide answers to that. I actually have mixed feelings about that response. I can remember being in a medicine circle many years ago in the 80s maybe and there was an elder from Nova Scotia, Henry Knockwood was his name. He came to be as one of the elders to speak to us about prophecies and he said this day was come when the white man would stick his hand out and ask us to shake it in French again. He pulled his hand back and said don't do it. We were also surprised to know his response. I think about that now because it's happening. We have dozens of emails and all kinds of requests to lead the charge for how we're going to respond to climate crisis. I guess I want to say as long as people don't betray the earth again and betray Indigenous people, then I would say we could help but I don't know that we can really get a commitment of non-betrayal. Anyway, that's a thought. I'm sorry I strayed away from the question. Don't ever apologize. Thank you for sharing. Stephanie, I would like to know what your definition of land back is. What does that look like to you? Thanks for asking. So land back is, it sounds like a pretty simple idea but when we start to complicate it with feelings and relationships, it becomes very complex. In the work that I do and the collective spaces that I discuss and agree on what land back is, we represent land back as a stepping back. I'm making space in a decentering of settler colonial desires, governances and dysfunctional relationships that attempt to control creation instead of recognizing that we are a part of creation. In fact, we are known as the younger brothers of creation. We are dependent on the rest of our family for existence. Land back is a recognition of settler colonial positionality as occupiers on territories that were never intended to be ceded or transferred to the crown, for example. It's a recognition of the spirit and intent of existing treaties of shared stewardship, reciprocity and mutual respect. For example, the tour wampum allowed settlers to occupy lands and established agreements that promise to work in harmony and peace, which we have maintained for a long, long time, while successor states quote unquote continue to extract, harm, erase and promote the legal fiction of land ownership. As a land trust, for example, at Neefolk, we recognize that and don't believe that land can never be owned by any more than a human can be owned. Land trusts see themselves as forever and perpetuity and we see this as a tool to reduce harm while working together to create the world free from extractive settler colonial pressures. So land back is to us not turning back the clock to an ancient imaginary. It's actually a return to things to us. It's a return to maintaining our knowledges and picking up our languages, maintaining the present tense in the ways of being doing and knowing instead of past tenseifying indigenous presences on the land or in medicine knowledge or any of these other ways of being doing and knowing. Taking into account that we as an Ongohoi will continue to evolve. Land back of course means access to our homelands again. It means sustainable food and medicines grown on the land and it means affordable housing in urban settings. Our indigenous languages come from the land so land back therefore includes the return of our languages to those lands and speaking those languages on the land completes our understandings of our cosmologies as indigenous peoples, our original instructions and I would say land back also means return to our traditional kinship systems and non-binary gender equity as well. So there's a lot of, it's a fairly complex intersection of so many ways of being in right relationship with each other and with the land. I'm just speaking to just bullet points here we could go on for hours and hours about what this actually means but thank you for asking. Well thank you for sharing. So now we've heard from each indigenous panelists what their definition of land back is to them and now I want to ask each indigenous panelists how they accomplish those goals. How do you receive lands for stewardship, tenure, working with trusts, etc. Like so Ramona I know with the Native Land Conservancy and the Dennis Conservation Trust that you've signed agreements to allow access and one of them was the 250 coastal marsh acres of conservancy land with the Wampanoag Tribal members and you have similar agreements in Barnstable and Sandwich Mass. How did these relationships begin? Right well actually the idea of cultural respect agreements or cultural respect to easements came from the western tribes over in California. We met with them at a conference and they shared with us this model that they were using to access lands in California to get resources for basket making and different types of materials and so here in the east there are a number of cultural materials that we would like to be able to use that no longer grow on our land so we thought about doing something similar that's how it started but since then it's morphed into a number of things. We have the cultural respect easements now we call it easements we tried to call it agreements but that seemed to put people in this idea that we're having a contract with them that meant that we would have to give them something in return and that was not really what the intention was this was an opportunity for colonizers to give us access as a group rather and group access also it speaks to the feeling of not being safe to go out alone every time not every time but when we go out on lands that are not hours per se as they call it the police are called or the the wardens are called or we're confronted by white people in general as to what we what we're doing there and it's an attempt to protect our access we wanted to be a formal document it may be even a get out of jail card but it is it was necessary to and also to teach people our conservation groups how unsafe we feel amongst white folks a lot of bad things have happened to our people in the woods children as well and I we don't want to play with that so that's one thing access access for foraging we've been working with the state to include cultural significance as one of the purposes for a conservation restriction so if a tribe in massachusetts can i identify along with a property holder and that there is something of cultural significance there that a conservation restriction could be awarded or secured so that that that that cultural significant area is protected for the benefit of the indigenous people um as well as the landowner can be part of the protection for that um yeah so so that's how we started we have purchased land from um tribal members who are are in tax trouble um on cave cod the um although our territory for the nato land conservancy stretches far and wide into mass southeastern massachusetts and into ron island um some of the areas where we where we live um the the taxes have risen so high that we're being taxed out of our own homelands and so to protect some of those lands uh the nlc with donation money have purchased um lots wood lots and other lots landlocked areas from uh for tribal members so that they they won't lose it and they won't have unwelcome neighbors um so that's that's another thing we've been doing uh there's a number of different relationships that have come out of um other land trusts are offering um conservation restrictions we have um protected an ancient village site um it uh in middlebarl and that's that's uh that's a working relationship with that town and also the archaeological conservancy which is a national organization um these are strange uh uh it's a strange relationship between indigenous and and archaeologists but um we want to make sure that if they're going to dig in there then we are going to be present to make sure that anything that is uncovered is um well it's hard to see you know we can't legally stop them but we actually have on paper the rights to prevent any infusion into burials especially mainly um but they're not really after they're not really trying to dig that area they're trying to preserve it uh so that was a good thing and that that is an important relationship to have um unlike just like the land uh acknowledgments some organizations are making proclamations and how they feel about indigenous people having access this is something that's new and coming up right now um I have a sample of it um I'll send it to you as a handout um and also a few other documents I'll send them as handouts um rather than sharing them on the screen the text is really boring but but it's very interesting how um different conservation groups are are beginning to see the light and that um acknowledging not just by saying you know hello to the tribes that used to be there or but they're actually talking about the tribes that are here and opening their doors to welcoming and protecting them while they're there on that land so that those are some of the ways um besides straight out donations we have had donations of land from Yankees and that's um I can't say it's hundreds of acres or anything like that but it's a star that's it's a beautiful start and thank you for talking about proclamations I had never heard of that yeah I've done a lot of research over this the last few weeks and I have not heard proclamations so that's a new one thank you for sharing that um Fred glad to see you we see you now yes I'm I'm back I had quite a quite a lot of technical difficulties here and shut everything down and brought everything back up so hopefully uh I'm making sense here and I'm sorry I missed the first part of the conversation um but yes go ahead no worries you're here now I figured you dipped out to go sit in the sunshine today so um I know that there's been more than one instance of land back happening for the Nipmuc tribe how do these relationships begin and how has the tribe benefited from or learned from these acts of kindness and generosity well uh just in in picking up on some relationships that had started in the past um you know one of the relationships we had here was with the Chabunga Gangamug folks in the Webster Dudley area and they had a made a connection with a gentleman in the Petersham area who wanted to work with us to give some land back so it was basically sitting down and talking with that person and saying well here's what you know we're kind of interested in doing um you know you've expressed an interest also in in helping us get there how can we move this thing forward so um after a while it took several years to uh to sort of get to the point where land could be transferred uh in one instance the land was given outright that was a smaller parcel of about two and a half acres uh which actually has some very interesting features on it it is across the road from a an ancient chamber which is in in the ground and across the road where we own there are some different structures there that really need to be investigated I think they go back quite a long way prior to colonial settlement although it looks like there's definitely evidence of of colonial activity on the site um yeah so it was working with that particular person in another case we had someone who had been really a long friend of the tribe been involved in sort of doing their own research for in in Native American uh study so to speak actually was part of a group that put on a number of different presentations on Native American culture they ended up speaking with us and saying that they wanted to transfer some land and I went and met with them talked to them about how we could go about that and they recently made a donation of 48 acres to our organization and there's a possibility we should we could be getting more land as well probably within the next year or two so it's just basically talking to people and becoming familiar letting them become familiar with you I think that really really helps there are those people out there that are interested in in moving land over to Native to our Native folks and just getting to know them is very very helpful question I'm sorry I wasn't listening what did you say there was a question oh do I have a question yes I was like getting ready to go ahead because great go ahead I wanted to add on that uh thank you Fred and thank you everybody for being here it's um really a thrill to be a part of this and um somebody who's moving quickly to elder status and I thinking thinking back when I was a kid and uh thinking conversations like this could absolutely never take place and um we're living really in a powerful time in terms of what we're seeing this this fundamental shift in um and understanding and in the consciousness about the place we are how we attain knowledge what how do we value knowledge and and and really understanding about what took place here on this land and um and interesting enough you know we talk about capitalism and um I've been calling it socialism capitalism because it's a redistribution of wealth within the same people generation after generation and so we we get lost in sometimes when we say capitalism but there are a large group of citizens are not taking part of it right and so and so this is something that um we really need to dismantle and um and just driving up here as I come I see the sign it says dearfield established in uh 1673 or whatever and and it's not really talking about the genocide the war and all the different things that took place and even uh in uh webs of deadly area where I live you see signs of still acknowledging uh they'll have signs of saying that the Indians massacre the Huguenots and things like that and it's really not uh uh discussing the thousands of families and millions of millions of people who were displaced and and uh and essentially destroyed on that very land and um and uh it's so excited to see what um what our net monk people are doing today in the in terms of uh land back um and I want people to think about that the net monk homeland was once 2000 square miles uh and and it's so grateful that we're getting making headway in Massachusetts but there's still Rhode Island there's still Connecticut and there's southern New Hampshire that still needs to acknowledge our right to exist uh and so we're really um we're really thinking about that and um and uh and it's so grateful to have allies supporting us because it's really about dismantling those systems of power and they're really they're interlocking right so when you unlock one you start to see what what what was holding place in the other ones in terms of the land and different things like that um for our people to uh have that returned and um and what it means back to me is that um we can't wait for the government right and that's Fred was talking about it's building relationships uh because essentially you're going to have citizens who are working to dismantle the things that the government institutionalize right whether it's the emancipation uh reconstruction Jim Crow segregation these were individuals that had to change this you know and so if you think you can't do anything you you know waiting on the government to help the Indians it's it's going to be you it's going to be citizens to stand up and work and really recognize this need so again I want to thank everybody as we go forward so appreciate that thank you I was I was distracted because Larry was like waving at me and you you said something about a question Fred I was like oh no like I saw him going I saw him going going pretty good over there so I'm listening to you so don't don't think I'm not listening um Kristen how have you worked with landowners to allow access for your community the rematriation project to learn about gardening traditional medicines harvesting like what works for you how does that how does that work yeah I would say um well we're always walking this fine line between the urgency um like as Ramona was sharing too with just we we don't have a lot of answers but we know that we can lead the path in the way out and and we should be um and at the same time some of the things that Stephanie spoke to and just unraveling and relearning and healing for our people in all of the years of trauma um it's not easy you know I I was just saying the other day how I haven't done any reading just for pleasure like all of my reading is about my ancestors to make sure that I know what's out there and it can be you know everything from the petitions which are heartbreaking to have those name ties for my genealogy and just I can name an ancestor and and do a search and usually it's some sort of grievance or petition around either a lack of access to their traditional fishing um the criminalization of of our people through the years of indentured servitude there are a lot of my family members the native that had very erroneous tax debts medical leans um you know getting in trouble for something and being jailed and needing to sell land to pay that out and and we had guardians that were kind of gatekeepers they were appointed by the Commonwealth and would even stand to profit off of our um our land sales and our deals and all of these erroneous leans um so it's been a really you know there's kind of this slow pace of um sort of digesting this and knowing we're in this for the long haul my daughters know um you know my my oldest keep saying but mom I just want to be a nutritionist and I'm like well that is inherently nipma and you can be that and still fight for the health and well-being of our people um so there's this path and trajectory of of health the fight for the health and well-being which I feel the collective is really great for responding for the times that we do get these acres of land into our hands and relearning our medicines and relearning our fishing and relearning our languages and our songs and knowing what to do and how to be a good steward when these opportunities arrive um we're also very political and so through that is this process of political education within our tribal communities of knowing you know our existence is political and um and that we're not just born having these inherent rights that these are struggles of our ancestors and so what does that mean when we're stepping into benefit off of something that our ancestors struggled for a really long time to make sure that we could have access to um and then there's the other dynamic of working within the colonial structures um personally I was involved with the I still am involved with the Boston Harbor Islands National Park my ancestors were forcefully removed in the middle of the night in October of 1675 and left out on Deer Island through the winter and so we've been trying to get land back in that sense of just even having a seat at the table and being respected as original stewards um of the rivers that led into these systems of utilizing these landscapes beyond just being captive um and beyond the kind of the tragic stories of our circumstances and so there's been years and years that's been a couple of decades and I would say that we still do not have that um that respected standing within the National Park Service structure so we're working with public landowners and this sort of access and respect for decision making and then everything down to private landowners um who will just give space for growing for seed sovereignty for reclaiming our traditional seeds uh you know we work with people who will propagate uh you know some of our traditional medicines that we can't access because they're in private property or because they're in polluted waterways trying to rematriate them to landscapes like again I'm just so excited what Brett is doing too and we know that we have um I mean that's that's the interconnectedness I think in the way that this can work we're all born into a gift and I believe that's what Eastern Woodland through Matriation is really trying to lean into of where is our place within the community to support this kind of out of indigenous sovereignty in the landscape um so that's really where we focus and we up private landowners that give over infrastructure or the sharing of infrastructure we needed a process like a ton of beans from a CSA farm that gave over a plot of land this past growing season and with the pandemic we were thinking of all storage crops and vegetables and things like that mostly three sisters that could then provide some sort of food security but there was also this re re establishing that relationship by bringing our children to that that land and just giving them the opportunity to just be who they are in those spaces is the way of awakening because we understand our land has memory and and that is you know Geter spoke to it a little bit it's almost like the reconciliation piece it's not just the human aspect of it our traditional landscapes are highly contextualized like Larry was saying these are about families who faced a lot of tear and bloodshed and trauma in these spaces and the land bear witness to all of that the land holds that pain and that memory and so we all stand to gain something um by just establishing that reconnection and like one other example I can share is um just recently there's a large farm in um in central massachusetts that just that just voted I think you know through this relationship with nimok people and listening to what they have to say not rushing for an answer not rushing for some quick transactional um activity that could make them feel good about doing the right thing but literally just approved a proposal of like we're going to give over our infrastructure and we're going to like into your increments revisit this relationship and for now we're giving you the space and so we're able to bring our kids out and harvest some some bark that we needed and and tap and tap maple trees and drink that sap and like literally just have that relationship kindled is is healing and process so I guess you know there's a variety of ways that we're doing it and and challenges we face in terms of very colonial structures and dominance like some of these public lands that still have a really hard time validating indigenous knowledge and ways of being and also private landowners that are just saying you know what I'm not doing this to be a hero I'm really gonna open this up in terms of the pace that you want and then we have everything in between from like farm holders that are worried about all of the assets that they put into their property and what does that look like to give over that power um we're grappling with all of that and um and I think this this is a really great panel to kind of show that variation of of what we're up against and in the role that everybody in the room can play thank you for sharing Kristen that's so beautiful and you're so right land has memory land remembers the language remembers the songs and remembers you when you're out on it um that is so beautiful and I am drinking maple sap because our trees are running um Stephanie I would like to know about the relationships of indigenous land tenure land stewardship in the northeast farmers of color land trust like how are you able to partner and gain access to land for your community and your work great question um okay so northeast farmers of color land trust is a little bit of a misnomer as far as what we are and who we are and what we do and why we do it but um it's the name that we were given when we inherited this work so what we are because we're not just farmers obviously and we actually look at agrarianism as a little bit extractive on the whole so um so to start the northeast farmers of color land trust is um indigenous driven we have um indigenous our co-directors two out of the three are indigenous people we have Neatmuk folks on the board which is a really lovely gift and we are building wonderful partnerships with um many indigenous nations just at the very beginning of building partnerships with um many indigenous nations across what is now known as the northeast part of the us um we always we say this now because um we are a land trust without land because we are building trust and I think that's most important to say is that we're not coming in and just acquiring land um and replicating settler colonial harm on the land by trading land is something that you can just transact on without respecting the histories the living histories of these lands and the relationships that living relationships that are currently um currently held right now so just to be clear about that we are a multicultural 100 black indigenous poc driven land trust and we are collectively weaving together our global indigenous ways of being doing and knowing on the land including um really with beginning with relationships so my role is I'm the executive director but I'm also the relationships resources and reciprocity co-director of the land trust because we really need to focus on building not just consultation with indigenous nations but true partnerships to start with that relationship I'm also a co-investigator on something called the relational accountability for indigenous rematuration project out of um York University and um again it's really acknowledging that we need to start with relationship and account accountability not only between settlers and non-indigenous settlers but also between indigenous nations as well as those indigenous peoples who were stolen from their homelands and forced into enslavement here on Turtle Island so really beginning with um building black indigenous solidarity is a really strong strong piece of the work for us um acknowledging that the descendants of formally enslaved peoples were not brought here of their own accord and we're forced to work here um and be enslaved here without their consent obviously so knowing that there are a lot of interconnected and complex ties between our communities and between our peoples and that we all need to survive and thrive on these lands um but we that we respect that these are the original homelands of the original peoples of this area um we include recognition of territories and ecoregions versus state and national boundaries um we definitely work on telling the truth about the homelands that we are on so historical signage is a big one especially in New England where historical signage is deeply violent um and tells stories that are big retraumatizer people every single time they drive past one um we actually have a sort of a little green book that we're building of um safe spaces and also places that need to change these signs and take them down um so um part of that is returning not only the languages of the land but also speaking those languages and renaming places based on the traditional territories and peoples of these lands we advocate for that um we also are facilitating and examining the structures and mechanisms for rematration of land with the NDN collective who's a partner as well as many other collectives who are working with just to start really thinking about rematration we are doing something and supporting something called biocultural restoration and for the next five plus years my life will be completely engulfed in this work I guess of restoration not just restoration but also making story on the land new story with our indigenous relatives with our communities I'm starting a PhD program with the Center for Native Peoples in the Environment starting in the fall that we'll be focusing on that um full-time so that will again be building relationship through resituating indigenous land stewardship and land management practices on the land and then measuring those by um by storytelling and story making we're also um learned from Ramona and our friend Peter Forbes here about the wonderful stop gap measure known as the cultural respect easement which is something that we had Ramona on for a webinar just to discuss how that was going in your territory and that was a really wonderful tool to learn about that many people are really excited about that kind of transcends the idea of um those no trespassing signs that myself and a lot of the medicine folks who I work with have been forced off of land at gunpoint or with threat of physical violence because of those no trespassing signs so advocating for those as well as advocating for voluntary taxation on land as a harm reduction mechanism and as a temporary way to reposition communal wealth um and then also just helping with um advocating for meaningful land acknowledgements that include actionable ways that organizations are actually supporting indigenous land sovereignty so not just for the optics of saying we're on territory um and we recognize that we're here but okay that's a good step but now you need to move into some action so so there's a those are just some basic ways um that we as a land trust are starting to work we facilitate remateration with and for indigenous nations so anytime land comes to us the first thing we do is contact the um leadership in those territories to find out how can we facilitate rematering this land back to your people thanks thank you so much for sharing Stephanie and you brought a historical signage wow that might be our next panel because where we live the signage here is off the charts um I mean we really need to address how indigenous people are represented through plaques memorials statues um we are on the mohawk trail um yeah we really need to address that that's that's super important thank you for bringing that up your you probably you put the seed in for the next one um so now for our non-indigenous panelists I want to thank you so much for being patient and I know that you both understand the importance of lifting indigenous voices first and foremost especially when it's by and for indigenous people so Jessica can you tell us uh your experiences of the wonderful things that can happen through this kind of work with indigenous communities and talking about creating those intersectional relationships and offer examples of these kinds of efforts maybe okay have some notes I actually even said are you sure you want me to be on this panel it's true I had to convince her I was like I don't need to be on this panel um so I have had um the wonderful opportunities to work on a bunch of different land back projects um the first very first one that I worked on as a phd student back in 2007 was with the Cree Nation of Wiminji um and they had built a team with McGill University and Concordia University to establish a biocultural marine and terrestrial protected area it's a whole mouthful there um but basically they wanted to protect an area of their homeland um from extractive industries specifically gold mining and also create a place that the colonial governments that would be the provincial and the federal governments would not touch and it would be a place that for conservation but also for um indigenous learning for living on the land and hunting and fishing and doing winter walks and their annual paddle um so that's one that I worked on and then the next one that I learned from and worked on was um out in Ontario um the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council was um in a joint stewardship agreement with the municipal city of Hamilton municipal council of Hamilton Ontario and they entered into an agreement um to implement Haudenosaunee governance to restore the Red Hill Valley there I want to give this example like first example is like an indigenous conserved and protected area the second example is um an example of a colonial entity government that in this case a city council um working on a nation to nation basis with an indigenous traditional government um to implement their their principles and their indigenous governance and also their decision making processes so the timing of of their decision making and not rushing it based on the colonial um model so this is very nerdy stuff um let me see a few more examples here I wanted to give some examples I I took down notes of examples but you really heard a lot of examples from the panelists already um is this where I should talk about how um non-indigenous people can educate ourselves a bit okay so I think like one of the I think that one of the um the key things for um non-indigenous folks who are interested in being potential allies in land back is to undertake a um path of of learning of um and there's I brought so many books like I'm an uber nerd here but I brought these books as an example of the kinds of um reading that we non-indigenous people can do um but first I wanted to say that um okay so some of the examples are um there's really wonderful indigenous scholarship on indigenous law and governance um traditional governance is often based on kinship um and there's many wonderful scholars who are um writing about and speaking about and generating how traditional governance carries for forward into the present and the future so like for example john boros he's an anishinabeg scholar and he is a prolific writer he puts out tons of books about um indigenous law and legal frameworks and values and ethics and how they apply to now um also important I would say is a general education um to read uh sort of general native studies um books I would recommend Arthur manual I know he writes about canada but he's an amazing wonderful or he was he just passed in 2017 wonderful accessible scholar to try and um unsettle to use his word our colonial assumptions that we have when when we're starting to try to learn about indigenous histories and presents and futures um another wonderful general um education book is this one by thomas king he's a Cherokee scholar and he has a um an amazing knack of humor like he will he will make you laugh and cry um I have a whole bunch here that people can look at afterwards but I'd say it's also important in in this area where we are to to read history um and so a lot of people know about like for example the common pot lisa brooks's book about indigenous history in this area um but you can also read this by william apis he wrote he wrote um he published and wrote a long time ago so it's important to read um books written by indigenous people here but even perhaps most importantly to read some contemporary contemporary books like these ones by larry but books about indigenous cultures and life ways that are from indigenous perspectives I love larry's books I'm just reading this one um because you can hear hear the oral tradition in his voice and and how he's a storyteller um but also here's this one by paula peters that's about wampanoag and um I would also say it's important to ask a question um if possible what are the creation stories on the land that we're living um and this is an example of a book he's he's from canada um isaac murdoch but isaac murdoch um published an algonquian creation stories in a book so you can read in that way so that's that's just the reading but other ways of learning about creation stories and about indigenous relationships with land and people here are by attending public events and listening to people like this um so yeah I'd say that's good now the other thing that I really wanted to say is that as it's from a like a settler colonial perspective it's really important for us to um suspend our perspectives of american exceptionalism and absolutism and what do I mean by that what I mean is that we tend to think well first of all we have in our our legal system this statement that we hold these truths to be self-evident and now it seems that people are waking up that they are not truths and they're not self-evident so what we have to do is we have to suspend our assumptions about american law coming from god american law american values american culture was invented by men and some women too um and in order to learn really well from indigenous teachers and scholars and community leaders we have to just kind of we have to start by throwing out what we thought that we knew um and to also understand that this these laws american laws are relatively young they're very very recent and um they can and they they must change in order to adapt to the realities of the populations now and in the future um and I loved hearing um what Ramona had to say about um not so fast with just everyone rushing to ask indigenous people about the solutions to climate change I think that um non-indigenous people we need to be very humble about our our learning and have good boundaries about it and um it it's important to be an authentic relationship and um we're gonna make mistakes um so it's important for us as in any any relationship to understand that we're going to make mistakes but to stick with it um should I talk about cape and pedestal I feel like I've gone on for a little while how much time do we have we have like about 10 minutes or so and I do I want to hear from Peter okay okay so I think that's good enough for now but um if you have any um questions about my um very opinionated experiences about this then please feel free to ask me after thank you I do like the idea of your cape and pedestal because we had talked about this before and that's a really important aspect but Peter you've had tremendous uh success building relationships between conservation's land trust and the indigenous tribes in Maine and I feel like and we talked about this I feel like in a way you have found a key like um can you talk about how the policies um and protecting spaces are in effect sort of closing this door to access and what is the key to opening this door like what is your relationship building strategy and you know how does this work yeah such an important question um I guess I would say uh the key is is knowing history things that have already been said and and humility and then I'm very very much aware particularly right in this moment the magnitude of this whole question I'm I'm still shaking a little bit you know from hearing Ramona uh tell that powerful story of of the person who said to her don't do it pull the hand back and she used the term betrayal and I too am aware I'm deeply aware I am from the very uh colonial structures that have perpetuated these problems right so I'm aware of the the betrayals I have very dear Wabanaki colleagues who I respect deeply who have said to me Peter this is too little too late so I carry all of that uh and it makes me more determined and and more humble um and if I might I I want to speak directly uh to the non-indigenous people that are listening to this live stream I want to I want to say some things to them because I know all of the indigenous panelists or others who aren't will know what I'm I'm going to say can I just share I want to show a map a couple of things let me would it be all right for me to do that absolutely yeah here we go um I think you're able to see this folks this is this is a map 1776 of indigenous stewardship of the land and this is a map of the loss of that I want you to take take that in one more time look at where it starts look at where it ends look at the flow of it and this um this is a map of of conservation ownership in our country and one of the key things I think of what Larry said we can't wait wait for the government I I believe that's so true I the community I'm from the conservation community we don't have the power to change treaties but we have that power we have the power that you see on that map and if we have the will if we have the awareness and the ability we can achieve enormous reconciliation just as evidenced on that map um I want to just shoot ahead to to talk about um these are the kinds of questions that that to make those transitions the movement that I am from have to ask ourselves who are insiders and outsiders to us and how does our history you know what what uh what Kristen said about the the history of uh Boston Harbor Islands National Park I mean that history a forcible removal of black brown and indigenous people to create our national parks that is that is part of the story that if you look like me it is the hidden story to the conservation movement that has to be understood in order for us to really achieve any kind of promise in our in our work because without that this this is the the end result the protecting from people and and away all of this uh became real for me in the land that initiated me into my life and that is in Maine um where the Wabanaki have been reduced to less than one percent of their land ownership and we don't have the time right now for me to tell you how I came to these understandings or where the relationships began but just focus in on that fact that are our Wabanaki communities of which there are five um maintain their culture on less than one percent of the land um that they once stewarded and and over that same period of time conservationists have come to control 23 percent of the state and there shouldn't there be an opportunity there just within that alone for some reconciliation that's the question that we've been wrestling with and yes there is um and and that land that is the second homes of people who look like me and the nature preserves was a Wabanaki bread basket and and home grounds and so this is the transition that we are trying to make from land conservation to land justice and in Maine we call it first life and and the ideas there are to repair and return at the speed of trust and that it turns out that the speed of trust it's slow in the beginning for sure I mean we've been at it for almost four years now but you'll see in a moment that the going slow and and relearning history doing these three things relearning exactly what was talked about before recentering indigenous voice then returning that those are the those are the keys that you were talking about ronda and relearning it's definitely about history but every year a cohort of conservation groups first there were seven then there were 15 and now there are 65 conservation organizations who spend 18 days every year going to the reservations doing home stays meeting with the chiefs reading the treaties going on canoe expeditions hearing from the elders hearing from the next generation really understanding that different world view so that we can then go to this which is about recentering in the very first gathering native non-native that we had in 2019 or we met separately native non-native came back to go and it was there Stephanie was there you'll remember when Darren Ranko and John Banks and ob Scott at the end turned to us and said we need the opportunity to have these forums to keep building our voice among the tribe and so we set out to do that you know we've we we raised $150,000 every year and we'll keep doing it to build the first pan tribal Wabanaki place of dialogue so that they can give the white conservation movement direction on what they need that's centering indigenous voice in my opinion and that's been a if you can imagine what a challenge it's been to do all of that but in our humble way we are making progress with that the the Wabanaki commission on land and stewardship has has been seated appointed by the five tribal communities and it is now meeting regularly to give us direction on the lands it needs Ramona and Steph you'll remember this gathering this this moment and what that has led to is returning and returning looks it takes many different shapes it is centering indigenous voice but in those three years we've already granted legal access to 62,000 acres for harvesting of medicines folding of ceremony protecting ancestors we've also rematriated 2,200 acres in fee simple to individual tribes we we think that the Wabanaki commission will become a Wabanaki land trust in time but we're standing by as a movement as a conservation movement in service to these tribes and this commission we're training and giving introductions to them to our funders and most important of all we're supporting the co-management of significant public landscapes I think in Maine we will be co-managing national parks before any other place in the United States because of these three things relearning re-centering and returning and I hope that from the place of colonization that there that this gives all of you on this call this this meeting this convocation the hope of what's possible to transform something and I'll pause with that thank you so much Peter for sharing you've really sort of crystallized what we've all been talking about here and I know that several panelists have also brought up the treaties the United States alone has entered over 500 treaties all of which have been broken and I just want you to think about what this landscape what tribal nations would look like today if none of those treaties were broken just really think about that for a moment I want to reiterate what we've heard today that we need to learn about indigenous peoples from your area learn about their past and present struggles ask them what their wishes are moving forward with land back listening and creating ways to relationship build and find out what form of land back works best is it individual tribal is it just access tenure stewardship what is it is it just funding um so in closing um I want to leave us with words that I have read from Ramona and quote her if that's okay our mother earth feeds us in every way she can restore us to our natural state of being when we find ourselves disconnected from what we think of as real so when we leave this space really think about that and the space that you're in and how and what your connection is and what that connection is what that remembrance is of this land is so thank you so much to the panelists for being here on such a gorgeous day go out there and enjoy your sun while you have it I just have one other thing say one more thing yes uh there's a book that folks might be interested in it's called the Dispossession by Degrees uh Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts 1650 to 1790 by Gene M O'Brien so it might be something you might want to look up and get a copy of it it'll explain a lot so oh thank you so much is there is there any other comments from the panelists I mean we've we're running out of time so that's why I just ended without make questions or comments so I feel really bad about that yeah I just wanted to say it was really pleasure to see everyone and listen I've learned a lot and I've certainly enjoyed this conversation and a very important one thank you thanks Ramona thank you so much everybody for the invitation it was so wonderful to be virtually with everybody and it was great to see some wonderful familiar faces again and thanks so much for all of your wonderful work thank you for sharing. Association to you all um obviously with a beautiful day it means we're all very committed to doing this work we're all showing up in this space and for those who are paying attention through live stream so just wishing you all well um and on this on this journey of of unlearning and relearning and remembering and and of justice right thank you thank you for sharing thank you Peter thank you Jess thank you thank you to Double Edge and everyone that's here today I appreciate you for listening okay thank you